Twenty six. That was how many apocalypses the Earth had been through. Alcor was finding it hard to care about this latest one, but something different would happen to a Mizar down in that destruction. Something he’d never seen before.
Dipper’s blood is golden! Gold does not do all the things his blood can do. Gold does not burn, or start steaming upon contact with the air, or all the things that fic authors have written it doing.
Mabel decides Dipper could use a little help with his summonings, and decides to go in his place as his temp. But she gets in a lot deeper than she expected, and discovers some new information along the way.
The H&H crew’s RPG shenanigans. You don’t need to have read H&H to follow this.
Firstly, Charlie GMs a murder mystery.
“Alright!” Alcor clapped his hands together. “We’re finally all here. Let’s do this thing!”
“Hey, sorry again about last week,” said Vin. “I was, for the record, totally willing to play, but Renee was all ‘oh no, we cannot, not until you stop being a fucking sicko’. And I’m like, ‘guess we’re never playing then’.”
“Something about the idea of you getting sick on my character sheet really kills the mood for me,” Renee said. “And I cannot find it in me to apologize for that.”
“Well maybe you need to look harder. I’ve been getting sick all the time since we got here, it’s absurd to put everything on hold just because of something as dumb as ‘serial barfing’.”
Renee sighed. “You know, I was on the same diet as you for years and I’m not perpetually ill. If you just were even slightly more careful about what you ate you would feel much better.”
Vin put his hands in front of him. “Okay but consider: food taste good. It tastes fucking fantastic, actually. Shit’s bananas. Which reminds me: I still need to try bananas.”
“Food would still taste good if you ate simpler things until your system got used to eating things that weren’t protein bars.”
“Yes, that’s great,” Alcor said. “You both have very good points, now can we play?”
“One would really think that after a thousand years you might have acquired some patience,” sad Renee.
Alcor crossed his amrs. “I haven’t roleplayed in two whole centuries, okay? Excuse me for not wanting to sit through an argument about bodily functions.”
“Okay, so just so everyone knows, I’m diverting from the traditional gameplay method until you all get introduced. The first scene is going to be Vin’s if that’s okay with everyone?” Charlie looked pointedly at Alcor.
“Hey, I’m fine waiting until my turn, just so long as we’re actually playing.”
Charlie smiled. “Okay, as a reminder and to help set the scene: we are inside the relatively young town of Celetter, built on the ruins of a massive subterranean city. Just who built the ruins is a mystery; all that is known for certain is that they died off or moved away long ago, abandoning their former home. They are thought to have been far superior in technology to anyone else of their era, and rumors grow like weeds about what they may have left behind. Some people are sure that there’s riches beyond imagination down there. Others think that the ones who came before built something too dangerous for them to handle, and that, perhaps, it now sleeps, just waiting for some foolish soul to once again wake it from its slumber. Others still believe that there’s artifacts capable of miraculous feats hidden in the caves. Most people believe that anything of value would have been plundered long ago and what’s left would only be valuable if you were especially interested in early 24th century city planning.
Basically, Bentley gets stuck on homework, and Dipper and Torako take it upon themselves to…help.
Bentley stared at his blank sheet of
paper, pencil limp in his hand, then back up at Torako and Dipper’s expectant
gazes. “I have no idea what my furry would be. Can we stop. I need to write my
final paper, half my grade depends on it.”
Torako groaned and flopped back,
splayed across the ground of the living room floor. She did not, Bentley
noticed, show her own sketchbook. “This is why
we’re figuring out furries! You’re supposed to take a break and have fun,
goddammit.”
“My paper,” Bentley said.
“You’ve been staring at your reader
for about three hours,” Torako said, “And we’ve been seeing you decline on the
essay-writing front for about a week now. Hence the furries.”
“I don’t know furries,” Bentley
said. He lived a very deliberate lifestyle of trying to be ignorant of Torako
and Dipper’s furry-related shenanigans. So far, ignorance really was bliss.
“We can always figure out what your
furry is together,” Dipper said. Bentley raised his eyebrows at Dipper, who was
uncharacteristically wearing a lime-green…suit? Bentley didn’t know how to
classify it. He did know that he didn’t
like the gleam in Dipper’s eyes, or the way his smile edged a little too far at
the corners. It was his sneaky smile.
“No,” Bentley said, flat.
Dipper and Torako moaned in unison.
Bentley glanced at the time display on the opposite wall—after eleven, he
really needed to write that paper—and made a decision. It was probably a
decision he would come to regret, but he needed to stop relaxing and get
working, and the faster he got this over with the faster he could get his paper
done the faster he could lie in bed and think about how much his teacher would
hate it. Bentley also knew, from experience, that Torako and Dipper were
tenacious little shits who would keep distracting him in the name of relaxation
until he gave in. There was no avoiding his fate
Bentley huffed and ruffled his hair.
“Fine,” he said. “Just—show me yours, I guess. For reference. You first,
Torako.” It would be better to get the more chaotic of the two over and done
with, he thought. For his own sake.
Torako sat up in a feat only
possible through the power of her impressively toned abdominal muscles. She was
beaming. Dipper pouted on the couch next to Bentley, but didn’t say anything.
Instead, he clutched his datapad closer, having insisted on ‘newfangled
technology’ instead of paper.
“I love you,” Torako said. She
lowered her eyelashes and grinned a grin that made Bentley tense in
preparation. “Are you ready to see it?”
He took a deep breath, tried—then
failed—to relax, and nodded. “Go for it.”
backup 
